Equalizing Opportunities to Learn: A Collaborative Approach to Language and Literacy Development in Preschool

The teachers take every opportunity to reinforce the targeted vocabulary, concepts, and language skills naturally, using teachable moments during circle time and transitions-and even while eating lunch. Since the ELLI Lab School's mission is to create equitable learning opportunities and outcomes by maximizing early language and literacy development, much of the teachers' professional development is devoted to studying the developmental pathways children take to acquire academic language. [...]the yearlong big idea of animal and human adaptation that connected our learning about dinosaurs, farmers' markets, and other topics focused on academic vocabulary, such as human, habitat, adapt, adaptation, needs, wants, herbivore, carnivore, predator, and prey. The strength of the data has enabled us to expand into several model classrooms across Norwalk. Since the expansion sites can't also be in children's museums, we have brought traveling museum exhibits to the new sites to stimulate the development of complex, playful learning environments in each classroom. Here is a list of the children's books used during the visual arts project in which the children created the mini-museum * A Blue Butterfly: A Story about Claude Monet, by Bijou Le Tord (1995) * Color Zoo, by Lois Ehlert (1997) * A Day with No Crayons, by Elizabeth Rusch, illus. by Chad Cameron (2007) * The Dot, by Peter H. Reynolds (2003) * Hugo & Miles in I've Painted Everything!, by Scott Magoon (2007) * I Ain't Gonna Paint No More!, by Karen Beaumont, illus. by David Catrow (2005) * It Looks Like Spilt Milk, by Charles G. Shaw (1998) * Look!